“If I tremble, mine vrouw, it must be from the fever. There is no guilt on my soul, thank God!” “Take a sip of this wine, Raff. There, now you are better. It was like to a crime, you were saying.” “Aye, Meitje, like to murder. THAT he told me himself. But I’ll never believe it. A likely lad, fresh and honest-looking as our own youngster but with something not so bold and straight about him.” “Aye, I know,” said the dame gently, fearing to interrupt the story. “He came upon me quite suddenly,” continued Raff. “I had never seen his face before, the palest, frightenedest face that ever was. He caught me by the arm. ‘You look like an honest man,’ says he.” “Aye, he was right in that,” interrupted the dame emphatically. Raff looked somewhat bewildered. “Where was I, mine vrouw?” “The lad took hold of your arm, Raff,” she said, gazing at him anxiously. “Aye, so. The words come awkward to me, and everything is like a dream, ye see.” “S-stut! What wonder, poor man.” She sighed, stroking his hand. “If ye had not had enough for a dozen, the wit would never have come to ye again. Well, the lad caught me by the arm and said ye looked honest. (Well he might!) What then? Was it noontime? “Nay, before daylight--long before early chimes.” “It was the same day you were hurt,” said the dame. “I know it seemed that you went to your work in the middle of the night. You left off where he caught your arm, Raff.” “Yes,” resumed her husband, “and I can see his face this minute--so white and wild-looking. ‘Take me down this river a way,’ says he. I was working then, you’ll remember, far down on the line, across from Amsterdam. I told him I was no boatman. ‘It’s an affair of life and death,’ says he. ‘Take me on a few miles. Yonder skiff is not locked, but it may be a poor man’s boat and I’d be loath to rob him!’ (The words might differ some, vrouw, for it’s all like a dream.) Well, I took him down--it might be six or eight miles--and then he said he could run the rest of the way on shore. I was in haste to get the boat back. Before he jumped out, he says, sobbing-like, ‘I can trust you. I’ve done a thing--God knows I never intended it--but the man is dead. I must fly from Holland.” “What was it? Did he say, Raff? Had he been shooting at a comrade, as they do down at the University at Gottingen?” “I can’t recall that. Mayhap he told me, but it’s all like a dream. I said it wasn’t for me, a good Hollander, to cheat the laws of my country by helping him off that way, but he kept saying, ‘God knows I am innocent!’ And he looked at me in the starlight as fair, now, and clear-eyed as our little Hans might--and I just pulled away faster.” “It must have been Jan Kamphuisen’s boat,” remarked Dame Brinker dryly. “None other would have left his oars out that careless.” “Aye, it was Jan’s boat, sure enough. The man will be coming in to see me Sunday, likely, if he’s heard, and young Hoogsvliet too. Where was I?”